


aftermath

by hestiaandhercat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Everyone is traumatized, Moral Dilemmas, Other, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, death mention, should you kill people to save people basically, shouting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:07:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23925889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hestiaandhercat/pseuds/hestiaandhercat
Summary: You didn’t want to kill him either”, Harry shoots back. He remembers that day, clearly, the passed out waitress, the hastily closed down pub, the two stunned Death Eaters at their feet. How pale Ron had been. “You looked at me, and you said-”“I know what I said! Yes, I didn’t want to kill them. But if you would’ve told us to do it, I would’ve done it!”“So you decided to let me make that decision, and now you’re putting the blame on me because someone got hurt. Seems hardly fair, if you ask-”“Someone got hurt?!” It is Hermione who is shrieking now, and it is so unexpected and unfair that she is also shouting at Harry now, at Harry who just wants to forget and can’t understand what would compel someone to collect the events of three years of terror in a giant, overflowing folder, death laced with misery and betrayal and so much pain.“They died, Harry! They’re not out sick for the week, they’re dead! All of them!”
Kudos: 3





	aftermath

“Fuck you!” The words tumble out of Harry’s mouth before he can really wrap his mind around them, but after they’re said, he doesn’t want to take them back.

Ron, proud receiver of the ‘Fuck you’, doesn’t even wince. They’re both angry, but Ron is even angrier than him.

“Fuck Remus, you mean. And a bunch of other people. I don’t even want to know how many that guy killed… or actually, yes, I do want to know. You’re the one who doesn’t.”

“Yeah, because it’s over!” Harry nearly, nearly shouts, but somewhere between his thoughts and his mouth, the words lose their energy, and come out in a mumbled half shout-half-whisper instead. “It’s finally over, and you just can’t let it go, can you? Do you even want to know how I feel? How many nights I’ve spent thinking about Sirius and Albus and-”

“But that is not the point, Harry.” Hermione’s voice is calmer, almost soothing, but her words are like daggers either way, sharp, pointed daggers that tear open the layers of forgetfulness in which Harry wrapped his memories. “Those deaths you were not responsible for. And even though a part of you will pretend to feel responsible, you actually know, deep down, that you weren’t. You’re grieving, Harry, but you’re not questioning your own actions.”

“Oh, so you don’t think I should be sad about any of the people that died if they weren’t killed by me?”

“I didn’t say that, I-” Hermione trails off. Her cheeks are wet. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.” Her hands, once brown, now lined with a mess of silvery scars, fidget with the sheets of paper in front of her, pages and pages of notes in her tiny handwriting. Harry remembers looking at that exact same handwriting every year before the final exams when he read through her notes. He feels like he is in an exam yet again, only that this is a hundred times worse.

“Yes, you should have”, says Ron, his voice still laced with anger. He’s angry a lot these days, and Harry knows that that is his way to cope, that he shouldn’t respond to that, but he can’t put up with it any longer, especially when what Ron is saying feels so right.

“You didn’t want to kill him either”, he shoots back. He remembers that day, clearly, the passed out waitress, the hastily closed down pub, the two stunned Death Eaters at their feet. How pale Ron had been. “You looked at  _ me _ , and you said-”

“I know what I said! Yes, I didn’t want to kill them. But if you would’ve told us to do it, I would’ve done it!”

“So you decided to let me make that decision, and now you’re putting the blame on me because someone got hurt. Seems hardly fair, if you ask-”

“Someone got hurt?!” It is Hermione who is shrieking now, and it is so unexpected and unfair that she is also shouting at Harry now, at Harry who just wants to forget and can’t understand what would compel someone to collect the events of three years of terror in a giant, overflowing folder, death laced with misery and betrayal and so much pain.

“They died, Harry! They’re not out sick for the week, they’re dead! All of them!”

The truth, the horrible, all-ending truth he likes to pretend doesn’t exist is staring at Harry again, and licks its lips as if trying to decide how many bites it’ll take to end him like it ended all the others.

“I know that, Hermione.” Harry is so tired. He wants to escape, to just leave, but there is nowhere where he could go. He could visit the Weasleys, but Molly’s face has grown tight in a way that he can’t look at for too long without crying.

Whenever he has slipped out of the house because he couldn’t take it anymore, the many things unsaid, the scribbling of Hermione’s pen adding death to death to death, he’s ended up just walking through the streets, never going anywhere, just looking and walking and waiting for something to happen.

For someone to come along and tell him that it’s all over now, that he has nothing to worry about. Or: that it wasn’t real, that it’ll all go back to normal now, that nobody actually died-

“So you’re saying we should’ve killed Dolohov”, he begins, reasonably, adult, mature. “And what then? Some other Death Eater would’ve taken his place. Remus would be dead all the same, for all we know.”

“So that’s how you’re gonna go about it. Making it quite easy for yourself, aren’t you?” Ron’s face is twisted up in an amount of anger that Harry has scarcely seen before. It’s only midday, but he is pretty sure that Ron has already started drinking. None of them have ever complained about that before, although Hermione has tried, once or twice, to slip him water into his bottles. He’ll notice, though, and then they have another fight.

“And what about all the other people that you could’ve killed? What about-”

Harry tries to drone out the voice. Let Ron have his go. It’s how he manages.

Ron’s drinking, Hermione’s writing, Harry’s waiting. They’ve all found their ways to deal with their continued existence. They have not yet found a way to deal with each other.

“Like in Fourth Year, you could’ve-”

That is so unfair that Harry cannot ignore it. “I could’ve what? Killed Voldemort, and magically destroyed all of his horcruxes while I’m at it? I didn’t even know about horcruxes back then! And that’s Albus’ fault, not mine.”

He has spoken to the portrait of Dumbledore in the Headmaster’s office. It was Minerva’s idea and since he didn’t want to say no, he went. They did not talk about important stuff. It seems to Harry that Albus, in life as in death, is forever good at avoiding to ever talk about the important stuff if it isn’t absolutely necessary. 

“Well, you could’ve tried something else than bloody Expelliarmus, maybe!” Ron’s red in the face now, actually-tomato-red, and his windmill arms are posed in front of him and what can only be described as a boxer’s stance.

The horrible thing is, he’s right. Harry could’ve tried to be less of a bloody goody two shoes and more like Dumbledore. There was someone who never missed opportunities. Yet after all this time, after all this fighting, there is still… contempt in him when it comes to killing.

It seems so final. Harry doesn’t like final things.

He does not voice these thoughts to Ron. He simply says. “I could’ve. And maybe I would’ve found a taste for killing after that and become the next Dark Lord, and Dumbledore would’ve had to fight me, and wouldn’t that have been so much better for everyone, since none of you seem to appreciate me being on your side.”

“Harry-”, Hermione starts, her notes forgotten on the table. Harry can see the name Dolohov on them, it’s jumping from the page, circles in red, with a little arrow that points to the name “Remus Lupin”.

He decides then, in that moment, that he doesn’t want to take it any longer.

“I’ll be out”, he says, and slips out of the door before his two remaining friends can say anything else that might open him up to his entrails and leave his feelings a bloody mess on the floor.

Are they still his friends? He doesn’t know. 

He finds that he doesn’t know many things these days.

Harry slips into his coat and out on the street. He resumes walking and waiting - walking nowhere and waiting for everything and nothing all at once.

  
  



End file.
